U.S. Immigration and Restorative Justice
Woe to them all?
What, if anything, should we guarantee to immigrants coming to our country illegally? I would certainly argue that at a minimum we are obligated not to do psychological — and therefore possible physical brain damage–to the children present who had no real agency in their parent’s decision to illegally cross into the United States. Rather than arresting these people and throwing them in jail and holding them morally culpable for wanting a better life for their family, at a minimum deport them instead.
From May 5th to June 9th 2,342 children were separated from their families. We must ask if this is a tactic we wish to continue. Even if we could eliminate the immigration problem by separating just those 2,342 children, and placing them in either social services or with other family members, is it worth it? It seems the moral buy in price is too steep.
According to Reuters:
“ICE officers arrested far more suspected illegal immigrants in the months after President Donald Trump took office than in the same period last year. Between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, the agency arrested nearly 111,000 people, a 42 percent increase over the prior year.”
The rise of arrests is of illegal immigrants of no criminal background is not shocking considering the Trump administrations rhetoric. (graph directly below)
Especially considering that now the actual number of immigrants making the crossing has been decreasing for years. Surprisingly still most of the arrests made in FY17 are of immigrants with a criminal record. Oh! So, they are mostly criminals and we should lock them up! Gotcha! More on this in a second.
Restorative Justice
It seems like it would help to view this through the restorative justice lens. Restorative justice is a justice system that focuses on the outcomes of the crime and justice; what can be done to fix these damages and consider both the good for the victim and offender. For instance, if someone steals $20 from someone and is caught, the victim gets to stipulate, within reason, what would make him whole in the wake of the crime. Perhaps the victim is generous and knows the offender needs the money more than him, and he just wants an apology, okay. Or perhaps the victim had to miss work to settle the case; perhaps the offender gives him $60 bucks for damages. With this approach we can make more the parties involved more satisfied than with the traditional method. Restorative justice’s sexiest appeal is that you have the option of meeting your offender and talking to him/her. That must be one uncomfortable encounter for the offender. This would seem to create a larger empathy response in the offender that is not exactly available in the current justice system. “Why did you take my $20, man? I was going to use that to buy the homeless under the underpass blankets!” Yikes.
Now, restorative justice is a viable solution for crimes with distinct victims, like murder, theft. However, with things like immigration or social security fraud it becomes difficult logistically–how do we tabulate the demand for justice from 600 pissed off seniors? Probably a lot of hearing aids and bengay, but that’s not important. Now this kind of one on one interaction is totally optional with restorative justice, and not the main tool of it that is useful here.
The idea restorative justice helps destroy is the idea that offenders owe reparations to the state, they owe only to the people they offended. And unless the illegal immigrant can be shown to pose a risk of harming a U.S. citizen, it makes no sense to imprison them. These people cannot be held morally culpable for wanting a better life for themselves or their families. In some instances, for sure, their prime motivation is the bettering of their families’ lives. The simple fact that these people are willing to risk imprisonment for just a little upward mobility is noble, and something you would think Americans would admire. I don’t think many people have to search their directory of American humans they know long to find one that would violate another country’s law to escape extreme poverty with their family. With a little empathy one can see that Americans are simply lucky enough to not be born poor in a country riddled with drug crime due to its’ gluttonous neighbor.
Now, back to the “criminal immigrant.”
According to Pew:
“Half (50%) of the 165,265 total arrests made by the federal government in fiscal 2014 — the most recent year for which statistics are available — were for immigration-related offenses, such as crossing the border illegally or smuggling others into the United States”
This, along with the graph (below), we can see that the types of immigrants being arrested are pretty benign. This is not to say a country should not ensure border security and imprison violent or dangerous immigrants–it should. But you will notice that violent crimes are in the minority on these graphs.
The idea of Trump’s zero tolerance policy is to separate children from their parents to criminally charge the parents as a deterrent to immigration–which it is working by about 18% (Times reported from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection). Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave touches on the psychological effects of being separated from mothers:
“Everybody needs a mother. Even rodents; separate rat pups from Mom a few hours daily and, as adults, they have elevated glucocorticoid levels and poor cognitive skills, are anxious, and, if male, are more aggressive.”
It is clear without this empirical rat data that separating a child from a parent for the crime of trying to better their lives is a barbarous act. Sorry for the value judgement. These effects are mitigated if you find a caring parent figure, however, it is doubtful that many of the separated 2,342 children will find anything as caring and comforting as a blood parent.
But what does it Cost?
From the restorative justice frame, it makes no sense to proceed like this. Condemning children with little to no agency to a bath of stress hormones all to hold their parents morally and legally culpable for trying to better their family’s position in the social hierarchy. A recipe for psychological problems. You must ask: who is winning here? Nobody. The state is a cold, draconian thing here.
The Center for Immigration Studies did a report “Deportation vs. the Cost of Letting Illegal Immigrants Stay” in which it is shown that deportation is cheaper than imprisonment. Who would have thought. So, most immigrants are not ragingly violent, so deport them, with their children.
There is an obvious recidivism issue here when talking about deporting most immigrants; they can come back. Whatever economic drain this would be on our country to continually deport them, ethically we should be responsible for this and foot the bill and it is cheaper than imprisonment. There are people who would argue that immigrants are no financial burden to the U.S. but to them I would ask: “how many people could we house and feed in our country with less than a high school education?”
This is a serious question and failing to answer it firmly can only make right leaning individuals become more radical in solving it.
Originally published at brandondot.wordpress.com on July 7, 2018.
